And They Thought We Were Wicked
by painted.inkblot
Summary: ...But oh, were they wrong. We're just Slytherins. A series of oneshots about the Slytherins in Harry's year.
1. Refraining From Standing

**A/N: This is the first chapter of a series of oneshots about the Slytherins in Harry's year. There is no particular pattern or order; they're just posted when I write them. Anyway, here's the first, monstrously long, oneshot, about Theodore Nott.**

**I love Theodore Nott, because we know nothing about him except for that he's Slytherin and according to JK Rowling, is a 'clever loner'. That is enough to get me interested in him, and as I've always imagined him somewhat neutral, I finally got a good enough idea to express his personality.**

**Disclaimer: The Slytherins aren't evil people. I think that's enough for me to say.**

* * *

**Refraining from Standing**

* * *

I remember my experience with the Sorting Hat. It wasn't mind blowing or awe inspiring or epiphany inducing. Yet, I still remember the exact words the Sorting Hat said to me before sorting me into Slytherin.

"You're a Slytherin through and through. But after recent history, I'm not surprised. You're a Death Eater's son, after all. Hope you're not one of the many who'll be lost to him."

And as I took of the Hat and walked to the Slytherin table where the already sorted first years were sitting, mostly kids I had known for a while: Draco Malfoy, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Daphne Greengrass, Millicent Bulstrode, and Tracy Davis. I had no doubt Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini would soon join our ranks.

_You're a Slytherin through and through._

That was the first thing the Sorting Hat had said to me, quashing my hopes of being surprised by my sorting, not that I thought I'd get one.

_Recent history…_Part of the second. Rather obvious euphemism. Why's he surprised I'm Slytherin because of the Dark Lord Voldemort?

_You're a Death Eater's son, after all._ The third sentence, the label I've always been known as; a Death Eater's son. It seemed to me to fit Crabbe and Goyle and Malfoy more than it did me.

_Hope you're not one of the many who'll be lost to him._ I had to wonder if he'd said that to kids he'd sorted into Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor, kids who weren't A Death Eater's Son. I doubted it. Did A Death Eater's Son (or daughter) inherit evil and supporting Voldemort? If so, where did the original Death Eaters get it? From being in Slytherin House?

Not that it wasn't all lies, I had thought when I glanced at Draco. He certainly supported the assumption.

I looked at the current first year at the Sorting Hat. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Though he was there for a minute, he still became a Gryffindor. Of course.

_You're a Slytherin through and through…_

_A Death Eater's son, after all…_

_Who'll be lost to him…_

_Slytherin through and through_

_Who'll be lost to him, after all…_

_A Death Eater who'll be lost to him…_

_A Slytherin who'll be lost to him…_

_You're a Death Eater's son, a Slytherin through and through…_

_Death Eater through and through…_

_You're a Death Eater, through and through…_

No.

_You're a Death Eater, through and through._

No. No.

The words were getting twisted inside my head, but they were a sort of twisted truth, patched together in a mind's ramblings but real. Was that what the Sorting Hat had meant?

My gaze skimmed over where the professors were sitting, then wandered over to where Professor McGonagall was standing calling out names to be sorted. But her eyes weren't on the parchment; they were inspecting. Inspecting the students. Inspecting…inspecting Slytherin.

I saw distrust in her eyes, I saw suspicion. I saw feelings of repulse and hate and disgust.

Distrust and suspicion and repulse and hate and disgust for eleven year olds that just happened to be sorted into Slytherin.

For Death Eater's Sons and Death Eater's Daughters.

And her kind wondered why we despised them.

But I'd been told about McGonagall. Strict, appreciated those with good grades. Maybe I'd try a lot for my first year, and she might see I didn't need to be distrusted and suspected and repulsive and hated and disgusting. I could be a smart and cunning and ambitious; a Slytherin.

I went through with it, simply because it was the only thing to do that whole year. Draco was Draco: an arrogant, annoying git. I could tell Pansy was clever, but she hid it too much under the girly, gossipy side so she could be with Draco and thus let her parents get in closer with the Malfoys. Goyle had about a fifth of a brain cell in his whole head. (Actually, I wasn't sure about this. He did seem to have a thinking expression quite a lot, so he actually may have preferred to let us think that and laugh at us in his head for doing so. I wouldn't have been surprised; he's a Slytherin, after all.)Vincent actually was average in intelligence but weak in will and was more of the servile type. Millicent held everything behind a fighting and wrestling stance; Daphne and Tracey just watched and exchanged words only with each other. Blaise switched groups and friends daily and just wasn't worth it; he also loved dramatics a bit too much for me. Sally-Anne Perks cunningly held her true personality behind a veer of friendly perkiness, just as her surname suggested. Though I knew it was a fake, she was so good at it I could barely stand to be near her. Mix it in with the fact I was also pretty quiet and preferred to speculate instead of talk, and the result was nothing to do but see if I what I could do would change McGonagall's thoughts.

So that whole year, I behaved like a Ravenclaw, or to put it more accurately for recent occurrences, like the Gryffindor Hermione Granger, but even swottier.

Every paper I got back received an O or an E, and Draco coined me the Slytherin Granger, though it only really caught on with Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle. My other fellow Slytherins had noticed a thick History of Magic book in my trunk and figured some sort of charm had been put on it to disguise what it really was; they were right and decided not to go too far in insulting me in any way, and so decided not to call me the Slytherin Granger. When Draco got two buck teeth just like Granger's from a potion in his pumpkin juice one morning, he had no evidence to blame me, though my classmates besides Pansy and Draco's cronies all chuckled behind his back.

At the end of my first year, I earned O's on all of my exams. I felt certain this might have changed McGonagall's opinion of me, a Slytherin.

Then one Saturday, while every other student was enjoying their free time outside, I was stalking the Hogwarts corridors for no reason at all, when I saw the door to a teacher's office slightly ajar – it was McGonagall's. From the squeaky voice also speaking in there, I guessed she was in the middle of a conversation with Professor Flitwick.

"And what of the Slytherin Firsties?" I heard Flitwick squeak.

"Nearly everyone is the child of a Death Eater," McGonagall replied, her voice low and husky. "Draco, Lucius's son, Pansy, daughter of the Parkinsons, Vincent and Gregory, sons of the Crabbes and Goyles…Blaise Zabini's family is neutral, but closer to support of You-Know-Who…The Greengrasses recently turned neutral, as did the Davises. The Perkses are Dark, as are the Bulstrodes. The Notts are also Dark. I've decided to pay special attention to Draco and Theodore – their fathers were part of You-Know-Who's inner circle…"

I froze.

"That Theodore Nott has quite good grades," Flitwick put in. "He learns quickly."

"Just what You-Know-Who would have wanted."

I could almost hear suspicion dripping of McGonagall's tongue.

"Something about it seems wrong, Filius," McGonagall said. "Those grades just don't seem natural. What's he trying to do – attempting to convince me he's not Dark and neither is his family? He's fighting a losing battle."

She knew what I was doing, though she'd gotten some of it wrong. But she thought I was Dark trying to convince her I wasn't; she was seeing through prejudice colored glasses.

I left Hogwarts that year angry and disillusioned. Maybe that was why I just stood off to the side and watched while Draco and his gang bullied McGonagall's precious Light Gryffindors, and remembered when my father, laughing after having several empty bottles of Ogden's Firewhiskey lined up on the table, had told me about how the Ministry twits carted Sirius Black off to Azkaban instead of Peter Pettigrew, who had been a Gryffindor.

* * *

The Slytherin Heir had to be evil, no matter what their intentions and motivations that lie hidden were.

Or so Hogwarts's students and teachers said, besides the Slytherins, of course. They all quaked in fear, as one student after another turned up petrified, supposedly from the monster that Salazar Slytherin placed in the Chamber of Secrets.

Yet I wondered what would have been happing if these rumors were of any other House Heir besides Slytherin. A Hufflepuff heir would have a bit of derision directed toward them – Who would want to be the heir of the woman who founded a house for slow plodding duffers, the students would say. But under it there would be a certain amount of admiration and respect for an heir of a Hogwarts founder, even if it was Helga Hufflepuff.

There would be rather high expectations for Rowena Ravenclaw's hair. Everyone would expect him or her to be somewhat of a genius, as Ravenclaw was renowned for her intelligence and wit. They would be respected and admired, especially among their fellow Ravenclaws. It would be somewhat of a small awe surrounding them throughout their Hogwarts year.

Godric Gryffindor's heir, on the other hand...students and teachers would go wild. They'd be famous and followed for all of their Hogwarts years, and have more fame than any other heir among the wizarding world. They'd be expected to be brave and smart and warm and kind...you get the image. Even if they weren't all of that, everyone would _think_ they were because they'd just be so awed. Gryffindor's heir would be loved, because they were the heir of _Gryffindor._

Oh, but the heir of the infamous Salazar Slytherin…only two words would describe that. Hated and feared. Of course, Slytherin's heir would be cruel, mean, cold, arrogant, evil, a muggleborn hater, a Dark witch or wizard…the possibilities went on. Anything negative and of course the heir of Slytherin would have to be it. Admiration and respect? You must be joking, unless you mean by the other evil witches and wizards.

Call my thinking bollocks, but I saw something that didn't fit in that.

All that year, as I walked along the corridors, students from other houses gave me suspicious looks, not that I wasn't used to that already, being a Slytherin. But these suspecting looks had an undertone of horror, after students starting turning up petrified. Eventually they all became directed toward Harry Potter, but I still got some my way every once in a while.

I knew he wasn't, but I was in favor of Potter being the heir, just for the reaction because he was a Gryffindor and not a Slytherin. The wizarding world would be in turmoil just because of houses at a magical school in Scotland.

Most of second year passed as I thought about these supposed reactions and once again shook my head at how Slytherin was so different from the others, and ignored the suspicious glares.

Then Penelope Clearwater became petrified.

That, in itself, wasn't much of a surprise. She was muggleborn, after all, and petrified along with Granger, another muggleborn.

Then there was Daniel Clearwater, younger brother of Penelope Clearwater, second year in Hufflepuff, very close to his sister and, like most muggleborns, with a very strong belief of the Slytherin stereotype.

I'd been wandering around with no place in mind to go; at the time I was near the infirmary, trying to decide if I should get lost by going off to the right or to the left. After some speculation, I set my sights on wandering around lost at the left when Daniel ran out of the infirmary, positively desperate to strangle Slytherin's heir, whether it be with magic or brute force. He had to do it now, and no other time would suffice.

And just some random Slytherin – in the house of Slytherin whose heir was causing all this trouble – hanging outside the infirmary was sufficient enough as a replacement for a short while.

"You petrified Penny!" he shouted as he hurtled toward me, his tear streaked, wet cheeks a rapidly darkening red. "You're going to pay, you wicked Slytherin, you're going to pay for killing my sister!"

I had always concentrated on my intelligence and magic, not my strength. From what I heard, Daniel had come from a sports family and played in many muggle sports. Add in the fact he was also burly and I was weedy, and one could infer that I got throttled in a few minutes.

"That'll teach you to mess with 'mudbloods'," Daniel hissed as he walked away and left me on the floor with several bruises, cuts, scrapes, and any other noun that applies to what you get when you're beat up.

Call me very selfish and grudge-bearing, but after that I didn't feel quite so sorry for the victimized muggleborns.

* * *

By my third year, I concluded that there were Old Slytherins and there were New Slytherins.

Old Slytherins were the ones Salazar Slytherin had thought of when he had created his house: subtle, cunning, ambitious, intelligent, observant, and persuasive. They didn't try to draw attention to themselves, but watched instead, looking for good opportunities to gain power, to manipulate, to accomplish.

New Slytherins were the people Slytherin House was now filling up with, the type that everyone else now thought Slytherins always had been and what Salazar Slytherin was. They spouted pureblood philosophy because they believed that was what Slytherin would like. They were Voldemort supporters. They were unsubtle and lazy, bloated from their wealth and thinking themselves deserving of everything good in life.

Their poster boy was Draco Malfoy.

One day, while Draco, Vincent, and Gregory were in detention, I herded Daphne, Pansy, Tracey, Blaise, Sally-Anne, and Millicent into the boys dormitory.

"Aren't you all worried about our house's reputation?" I began, pacing from side to side. "Years ago, we were known as the cunning and ambitious ones. Now we're known as evil in every way. We're hated, loathed, despised, suspected, and gossiped about. And certain Slytherins don't do much to discourage the stereotype."

Ever the cool, unfazed one outside of the perky mask she used outside of the Slytherin common room, Sally-Anne raised her eyebrows. "Be that as it may," she said softly, using the same talent that Snape used to speak quietly yet get everyone to listen to her, "as destructive as this prejudice is, we are feared yet respected for it. They are wary of us, and for good reason. As long as we know who we are, it doesn't matter what they think." She rose and dipped her head. "I feel I have made my point. If you excuse me, I have a Transfiguration essay to write." She gave her icy cool trademark smile and walked out. It always somewhat frightened me how she transitioned easily from a perky, annoying girl in our lessons and among the other students to an icy, almost psychically observant Slytherin in the common room; I had expected this reaction from her, though.

Tracey stood. "I understand you completely, Theo," she said, head held high, "as I'm muggleborn yet supposed to hate my own kind because I'm Slytherin. However, I feel this cause would be better achieved outside or after Hogwarts. But what you say makes quite a point."

"I agree somewhat with Tracey," said Daphne, as she got up. "But I feel it could be very well accomplished here, where most of Wizarding Britain's citizens are schooled. Here they will be more convinced to change their ways, which makes them more susceptible to our persuasion. However, we have stone blocks in front of us – the teachers. They are set in their ways and can manage to find out everything. With them here, your plan would be nigh impossible." She and Tracey left the dorms together.

Now Pansy rose. "You know my family's plans," she said in an apologetic tone which she never used outside of the common room. "And I know who you're directing much of this at. It could never work out for me; Draco treats me more as an object who can simper over him than a witch with opinions he could do well to listen to. The Gryffindors already think I'm an ugly, cruel hearted slut, and they hold sway over many opinions here at Hogwarts. Sorry, Theo," she finished with, and walked out.

By now, only Blaise and Millicent were left. Angular, square jawed Millicent stood up and flicked strands of her short, choppy dark hair out of her eyes. "We all know they think I'm an ugly, dumb brute who only knows of wrestling," Millicent muttered. "If I tried to reason with them about Slytherin prejudice, they would think I was taught how to speak." Shaking her head, Millicent strode out.

I sighed and sat on my bed as Blaise sat on his. "That didn't do much, did it?" I muttered.

Blaise shrugged. "Don't worry about it," he said. "They still respect us and fear us, and at least that's an ounce of knowing what a true Slytherin is. One day some Slytherin will annihilate all the prejudice and stereotyping of Salazar and his great house. Until then, I'm just content to wait."

Blaise had a point.

I grunted in half-agreement and settled down on my bed with a book about the history of the Founders. I knew what Blaise was saying was sensible, but I felt as if I was being cowardly, as if I was meekly accepting Hogwarts' prejudice and stereotyping of us Slytherins. I felt as if I was staying sitting down, hoping to go unnoticed, instead of standing.

I finished the section on Hufflepuff. The next page was embossed in fancy lettering with the words "Godric Gryffindor", and a portrait of a man with a mane of ginger hair and bright blue eyes.

I sighed.

* * *

There was an air of suspense in the weeks before we found out the champions of each school for the Triwizard Tournament. Clusters of students stood around whispering excitedly, saying things like, "I wonder who the champion will be?" and "What do you think they'll use for challenges?" When Cedric Diggory put his name in the goblet, several students speculated that he might be the champion, though he was a Hufflepuff. Some thought that a Ravenclaw would be good, with their logic, intelligence, and reasoning. Most, though, thought a Gryffindor would do the part, with their courage, bravery, recklessness, and adventurous spirit.

One of my fellow Slytherins, a sixth or seventh year, Chester Warrington, put his name in the goblet as a crowd hung by the goblet, watching the Triwizard hopefuls. He was the first Slytherin to do so, and I had watched him sitting by the flickering fire in the common room for several nights, speculating on the pros and cons of participating and trying to decide if he should have a go at it or not. At last, he made up his mind and wrote his name on a slip of paper and dropped it in the goblet, striding away.

That was when the whispers began. Whispers like, "Oh, I do hope Hogwarts isn't represented by a Slytherin," and, "That Slytherin ape Warrington better not be chosen!" Little snatches of murmurs that suggested Slytherins were wholly unfit to represent Hogwarts, despite being one fourth of the people at the school.

When Cedric Diggory was announced as the representative for Hogwarts in the tournament, the students all went wild. Not only because he was smart, popular, and all that, but also because he wasn't a Slytherin. Everyone was relieved because now they knew a Slytherin wouldn't be representing the great school of Hogwarts.

Then Potter was announced as the (insert a gasp here) _second_ champion for Hogwarts. Unlike many others, who were probably thinking, "How did he get past the goblet?" and other such things, I just shook my head; the Hogwarts champion was a Hufflepuff, get a wonderful Gryffindor was also still one, too. I knew he hadn't done it himself, though; Potter wasn't clever enough.

Sure, Diggory was the rightful representative, but I didn't accept one of Draco's badges saying Diggory was the rightful champion and that Potter stunk. I didn't want to be a walking Muggle billboard supporting Draco's ideas, thanks.

You think the subject would have been dropped after we found out the champions, but I'd still occasionally hear students of old Hoggy saying statements like, "I can't imagine how Harry Potter got himself as champion, but at least it's him and Cedric Diggory and not a _Slytherin." _Of course, they'd immediately stop and begin chatting about lessons as soon as they saw me near them, eyes narrowed and the hand with my wand held in it clenched.

I didn't do anything to them. I didn't try anything. It was useless.

In the seconds Potter and Diggory came out from the maze and we thought they had simply both tied, I didn't cheer.

* * *

I knew Voldemort was back, but of course I knew; my dad was a Death Eater. Potter was rather annoying, but I did feel sorry for him; couldn't those thick Ministry gits lay off him for once?

Not that Potter would think I was somewhat on his side. After all, I was a Slytherin. And _especially_ not after that awful Umbridge made the Inquisitorial Squad, consisting of Draco, Vincent, Gregory, Pansy, Millicent, Warrington, Montague, and a few others. I'm still wondering why Millicent ever joined it. Whenever I asked her, she never told me.

Umbridge asked me to join. I refused, and I and the Slytherins that didn't join are the reasons she'd actually take points from Slytherin every so often.

After the Inquisitorial Squad was introduced, I'd get plenty of glares, insults, hexes, and jinxes thrown my way, despite the fact there was no glistening silver "I" for Inquisitorial Squad pinned to my robe. Those that cast the hexes and jinxes at me usually ended up in the hospital wing. Never mess with a Slytherin, bastards. Remember we're also cunning.

Umbridge asked me to join the Inquisitorial Squad a second time, and I refused, asking if she was so horrible at magic she needed those that were still in training to help her out.

Then I got my first experience with a Blood Quill. My father kept one, too. I thought it looked strange, and asked what it was once. My father just told me Slytherins didn't mess with Blood Quill owners.

I noticed Umbridge had several more standing in a (no surprise) pink, heart shaped vase. Maybe there was one Blood Quill owner in the world Slytherins could mess with.

Apparently Umbridge couldn't think of one phrase that accurately expressed what I had done wrong, so I received two scars instead of one; "Do not question" on top, and "Humility is best" below it.

I noticed Potter had a scar also. It read "I must not tell lies".

A grim smile on my face, that was when I decided that in my mind, my scars read "Always question" and "Humility is rarely needed". After that, the scars didn't seem to matter much to me anymore.

But the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and even the usually intelligent Ravenclaws didn't notice what was really there. Instead, they preferred to imagine a sneer on my face and a silver I pinned to my robes.

Maybe that was when, overhearing about this DA Potter had started up with Weasley and Granger, I decided not to be a fool and try to join. The DA wouldn't accept Slytherins who supposedly had I's on their robes.

They wouldn't accept Slytherins without I's either.

* * *

Unknown to me, I had gotten a tattoo over the summer. Also unknown to me, I had gotten giant words hovering above me that blinked on and off and shouted "BEWARE! EVIL SLYTHERIN DEATH EATER HERE! BEWARE!"

They were both invisible. To me, at least. To those from any other house, they were clear as day.

The only Slytherin in my year that actually had one of those was Draco, unsurprisingly, though I was pretty sure that Crabbe and Goyle would be getting theirs next year. Despite what others might think, the Slytherins of my year wouldn't have some Mass Migration to join the Death Eaters. Besides Pansy, who wouldn't be a Death Eater but on the whim of her Death Eater parents, would be on their side, one of the reasons so as to get herself in a firm, cemented relationship with Draco. Draco was staring at Daphne's younger sister, though, despite the many slaps and hexes he got from Daphne for doing so. Blaise was neutral, like the Zabinis had been in all wizard wars. Daphne was neutral. Tracey obviously wasn't on Voldemort's side; she was a muggleborn. Perhaps if she was sorted into a house other than Slytherin she would have been on Potter's side; but she was neutral, thanks to the wonderful treatment she was given here at dear old Hoggy. Millicent was still deciding, as far as I knew. Sally-Anne was one of the truest Slytherins I'd ever met; she would never join Voldemort. I wouldn't be surprised if Perks was a fake name and her real name was Gaunt or Slytherin.

I was neutral. One would think that if one had Death Eater parents, they'd grow up being on the Death Eater side; being Death Eater offspring, I knew that wasn't true. I didn't want to grow up with a Dark Mark on my arm, or kowtowing to an insane man who, as far as I saw, didn't even really try to accomplish what he had said he would. He seemed to spend far more time trying to become immortal and the most powerful man in the world than destroy the muggles to make a safer world for the witches and wizards. He chased Harry Potter, a boy that was fated to either destroy Voldemort or be destroyed by Voldemort, something that didn't even affect his followers.

I didn't want to kill innocents, as much as I hated some of them.

But Hogwarts' students and teachers (excepting Dumbledore and Snape; wasn't it obvious they were each Occlumens and Legilimens?) couldn't read the inner workings of my mind, and they had no way of knowing that. So it was a supposed Dark Mark and a huge sign saying I was an evil Slytherin Death Eater for me.

This year, I was in the hospital wing for a considerable amount of time. Despite reading and learning far ahead and being a Slytherin, those seventh year Ravenclaws that hadn't managed to figure out that I couldn't possibly be a Death Eater could still catch me, and those Gryffindors that were _really_ determined to fight on the good side that caught me while I was distracted. The Hufflepuffs, with their common sense which I had never had the common sense enough to thank them madly for, caught on that I wasn't a Death Eater. Well, most of them. The first years and the ones who just had relatives murdered would shoot glares at me, but I understood.

All the Slytherins had an almost permanent pensive look on their faces the entire year, including me. It was all coming: an extreme suspicion of us from our fellow students and much of the wizarding world, our parents, most of whom were Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters giving us meaningful looks, and the feeling of a war starting.

It all felt much worse than it seemed.

And then Dumbledore died. Now, I had to say, I didn't like Dumbledore much. He basically encouraged the Slytherin stereotype and never bothered to curb the prejudices. He also blatantly favored the Gryffindors, and could get a tad annoying with his "speeches" (Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!) and his obsession for lemon drops. I'm sure anyone who has ever met with him as been offered a lemon drop.

Really, they're not half bad. But I would never admit that to anyone.

But despite his many flaws, he was probably one of the only ones that could stop Voldemort. Despite Harry Potter the "Chosen One", I still had my doubts. With him dead, Voldemort's job of conquering the wizarding world had suddenly got a lot easier.

Despite my dislike and my neutrality, I tried to get a seat near the front at his funeral; something in me just tugged and I knew I had to.

Many of the Gryffindors, such as Potter, sat in the very front. When I attempted to get a seat near the front, I was shunted to almost near the very back.

Where I joined all the other Slytherins.

* * *

There was no neutral. You liked the Carrows, Snape, and thus, Voldemort, or you hated them. You couldn't be anything else.

For the first time, many Slytherins joined the "good side". But though the other students had gotten what they wanted, they still wouldn't accept it. They thought it was a disguise, a spy technique. We were Slytherins and a war was raging; we _definitely_ had to be evil.

At first, the Carrows loved me. They knew my father, who was high up in Voldemort's Inner Circle, and they expected me to love them and my new lessons, being a Death Eater's son and a Slytherin.

Boy, did they get a surprise.

They found a boy who was very Slytherin, for sure – but not with the ingredients needed to be a Death Eater. I acted a bit like one, but I could tell they still had this vague suspicion.

Tracey, Blaise, Millicent, Daphne, Sally-Anne, and I usually kept quiet. We hated it, but we were Slytherins, and knew we couldn't get hurt. Well, hurt was rather an understatement. The correct word for it was _mildly tortured._ Oxymoronic, but true. We let the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors get "mildly tortured", while we sat unscarred, without signs showing our hands had been nailed to the desk, that we had been Crucio'd, that we had been hung upside down from the walls with iron chains on our feet.

And the other houses hated us for it. Even the Ravenclaws that hadn't been tortured wrote papers that mocked everything the Carrows stood for, included words like "Dark Lord", "filthy, dirty mudbloods" and "Crucio" and got O's for it, something even us cunning Slytherins hadn't thought of. We were confronted and insulted, nasty words spat at us.

We hated it, too. For all our cunning, we were cowards, we were too scared to resist.

But then came the day when I couldn't stand it anymore. In Muggle Studies Alecto Carrow was rambling on, once again, about how dirty mudbloods and muggles were and how stupid and idiotic and unfit to walk the earth. I noticed the Ravenclaws glaring at us, thinking we believed it all and thought so, too, and I couldn't stand it from either Carrow or what was left of the Ravenclaws, the ones who were halfblood and pureblood.

I raised my hand, the image of a perfect student.

"Yes, Master Nott?" Carrow asked, voice dripping with a sudden sweetness and like.

"Professor Carrow," I said politely, while the Ravenclaws – Cornfoot, Goldstein, Patil, Li, MacDougal, Corner, Boot – glared at me, "If mudbloods and muggles are so filthy and dirty, then why was the Dark Lord's father a muggle?" I raised my eyebrows, as if I was simply confused by a spell or fact.

It was so easy. Many knew the fact, but they never said it, thinking it too unoriginal and simple. But few remember simplicity is usually the best.

The classroom went dead silent for a few moments, while Carrow appeared to suddenly become the twin of a tomato, the Ravenclaws stared at me, disbelieving a _Slytherin_ had suddenly said such a thing, and my fellow Slytherins stared at me, too, in disbelief that _Theo Nott_, one of the most cautious and cool Slytherins had been so Gryffindorish and impulsive, had doomed himself so badly. Tracey had her face in her hands, and Sally-Anne seemed to retain her usual demeanor – she had begun to abandon the perky one – except for that her widened, awestruck eyes betrayed it all, eyes asking, _Theo, what have you _done_?_

If it was someone like Lucius Malfoy who I had said this too, the blood would drain out of their cheeks and they'd turn pale, very pale. But as this was Carrow, her cheeks were red and puffy and her eyes burned with rage.

"You!" she screamed. "You have betrayed your honorable kin, you have doomed yourself, Nott! How dare you even _suggest_ such a thing! Our Dark Lord has the purest of all blood imaginable, and he is a mudblood as much as _I_ am a troll!"

All kept straight faces at that, but we were all laughing at her justification of the Dark Lord being near mudblood inside.

"You will pay for dirtying our Dark Lord in such a way, Nott!" she screeched, her wand raised. "You will get due punishment, severe punishment!"

She shouted something unintelligible – obviously the Cruciatus curse – and I fell out of my chair, writhing on the floor as a pain I had never known before struck me. Non-Slytherins might have been used to this by now, with their smart mouths, but no Slytherin and certainly not me wasn't, being good little students on the outside. Then I vaguely heard Carrow yell something more, and a throbbing pain flashed in my forehead, leaving me unconscious.

When I woke up, I was in a small room I had never been in before. Madam Pomfrey was hovering about above me, with a small bottle in her hand. My head ached something awful, and was as pretty damn close to a migraine as I had ever gotten. My arms and legs still throbbed and stung, and I felt sore everywhere.

"What…what happened?" I croaked, forcing the words out of my mouth.

"I…I found you, Mr. Nott, strewn about like a kicked about doll on the floor near the dungeons," Pomfrey replied, some stammering managing to show through her usually crisp and brisk voice. "One of the Ravenclaws, Anthony Goldstein, was near and told me Alecto Carrow had Crucio'd you and cursed you in some other way – he couldn't hear the words – a week ago in Muggle Studies, and after that you fell unconscious.

"Wait," I rasped. "A week ago?"

Pomfrey sighed. "No one knew where you went after the class. The day after, Mr. Goldstein found you by the dungeons, and alerted me immediately. You know how the Carrows won't let me treat any of their punished students, so I took you to my private rooms and put a very strong disillusionment spell on you, like I do with the other students."

I nodded weakly.

"It would be best if you would go back to sleep now," Madam Pomfrey said. "You'll heal quicker."

I quite agreed.

Weeks later, I heard Neville Longbottom whisper to another Gryffindor, Seamus Finnigan, "We'll need to go _there_ soon."

I had to wonder what _there_ meant. Maybe they were referring to the place they had had that DA in during fifth year? Draco called it The Room of Hidden Things.

Either way, I had to join them. And drag Daphne, Tracey, Sally-Anne, and Blaise with me, too. I would have dragged Millicent, too, but she had since decided to join Voldemort, because a madman or something had escaped from a muggle asylum and killed her parents. Millicent told me this man had lived near them and had always thought they were strange. She was still enraged about it, and even though I kept on telling Millicent that right now Voldemort and his Death Eaters were currently focusing on Potter and not the original cause of destroying muggles and muggleborns, she still decided to join.

Blaise, I mused, wouldn't want to at all. He was somewhat a mix of Old and New Slytherin. Tracey might, and Daphne would probably go just to stay with Tracey, but neither would be happy about it because the kids that would be in The Room of Hidden Things would be on the good side, and we were neutral.

But right now there couldn't be neutral, and I thought better to be on the side that was killing an insane maniac that wasn't even focusing on what he originally meant to do than joining with him.

I momentarily thought about bringing all the other Slytherins, but then remembered I hardly even knew them. Sure, they had it bad, but I focused on getting myself and my friends out of this, not strangers. Besides, the teachers (besides the Carrows, of course) would look out for them. Especially the firsties. They had a soft spot for ickle firsties. I didn't need to worry about them.

In the dormitories (boys of course, since the girls could access it), I proposed this to them.

"Hell no," said Blaise, blunt as always. Slytherins could be blunt, especially when they were angry. "I'm not staying with a bunch of Slytherin-haters and mudblood-lovers."

"You might as well be on Vol – The Dark Lord's side, using _that_ word," I snapped, mentally cursing the Taboo that had been put on Voldemort's name.

Blaise fell silent. His father – the one he'd actually been related to, not the other six husbands his mother had – had been killed for refusing to join, years and years ago.

"He has a point, though," Daphne muttered. "They all hate us Slytherins, that prejudiced lot. They'd kill us if we put one toe in there, because we're sensible enough not to mouth off to those Carrows. And they call_ us_ prejudiced…"

"We're not going in there, Theo," Tracey said in a calm and steady voice – quite unlike Blaise's snarl or Daphne's quiet mutter. "Even though I'm muggleborn, I'm not going in."

I sighed. Failed plan. Again.

"But _you_ are," Tracey added.

I think it would have been more appropriate for me to just gape and blink, but being a Slytherin, I couldn't be surprised.

"What?" I said.

Or at least, speechless surprise.

"Come on," Tracey snorted. "After that little scenario a couple weeks ago, you're on the Carrows' hate list, even though you've been skipping their classes and avoiding them since. If they see you – and they will, soon – you're dead. You need to get in with those DA people; tear away their prejudices. It'll be pretty easy – there are Ravenclaws in it, and they saw what happened in Muggle Studies."

I sighed, in no mood to argue. "Fine." But I glanced at the four Slytherins. "You know, you're still going to have to fight. I swear there's going to be a battle soon here. If you don't fight, non-Slytherins will have tons of evidence to fuel their Slytherin prejudice for _years_."

I saw Blaise bite his lip, Tracey's solemn expression become firm and grim, Daphne squeeze handle of her bookbag, and Sally-Anne's intimidating gaze harden.

"There's no more neutral anymore," Blaise murmured, jaw set.

"The best of Salazar's luck to you," I said, using a formal farewell that was taught to every Slytherin on the first day of school.

Sally-Anne nodded. "Returned from us all," she said.

Now, it was time to accomplish a nigh impossible task…

"Honestly. I'm not a Carrow, you know."

Despite this statement, right now Neville Longbottom seemed pretty close.

I decided not to speak my thoughts. "Neither am I," I said flatly.

"But you're as good as," Longbottom snapped. "You're a Slytherin, which is basically saying you support V – You-Know-Who."

"And how would you know that?" I demanded. "You don't even know me. All you know about me is my house and the stereotypes that go with it. What would you think if you knew muggleborns were in Slytherin? Would you think they supported Vold – You-Know-Who, too, even if he wanted to exterminate him? Do you think if we grow up with a Death Eater for a father we'll automatically become a Death Eater, too? Do you think only Gryffindor can make their own opinions and thoughts and be on the good side? Do you think it's all right if the good side opposes prejudice but has Slytherin prejudice themselves? Do you think hypocrisy is justified if it comes from a good Gryffindor? Well. _Do you?_"

Longbottom swallowed and chewed his lip.

"He also spoke up against the Carrows in Muggle Studies, Neville. Got Crucio'd near twenty times and left in the dungeons for me to find a day later. I, for one, think he's serious."

I just noticed Anthony Goldstein standing near Longbottom. He always seemed like part of the wall until he spoke.

I waited for a minute or so, until it looked like Longbottom had digested the unbelievable fact that a Slytherin had done something that wasn't evil.

"Okay," he said rather grudgingly, though I had the feeling he was just saying it grudgingly because he wanted to, "you can come."

My heart leaped; I had accomplished something I had subconsciously been trying to do since I was a first year: persuade a Gryffindor I wasn't evil.

"But," Longbottom said, making my heart suddenly fall; buts were wickeder than Voldemort at times, "you can't stay there looking like you do. I may know you're not a spy anything, and so would the seventh year Ravenclaws, but I doubt anyone else would think so.

Something in my chest plummeted at that moment; I think it was my heart falling down an abyss.

"Great, just great," I said. "I can become part of the DA and live with you all in The Room of Hidden Things or whatever," – Longbottom and Goldstein's eyes widened at the mention of The Room of Hidden Things – "but I can't be there as a Slytherin, because all the fighters against Vol – You-Know-Who and his muggle and muggleborn prejudice have too much Slytherin prejudice. So I have to have a glamour over me that makes me look like a Hufflepuff firstie or something." I snorted, and added bitterly. "Really lovely, that."

"Well, I'm actually thinking a seventh year Ravenclaw," Goldstein put in.

Still thinking of my heart forever falling, I replied, "Yes, because everyone knows seventh year Ravenclaws come out of nowhere all the time."

"Actually," Goldstein said, "there is another seventh year Ravenclaw. David Moon. He was sorted into my house, but he was some sort of genius, and went to his own lessons. By second year he didn't even live in Hogwarts anymore – he finished everything, even the magic in seventh year. Since he lives in Hogsmeade, he used to come a couple times a week to learn the magic that you don't ordinarily learn in regular school – Warding, Dueling, and that kind of thing. But he finished with that by his fourth or fifth year. I don't know what he does now. But you could pose as him and no one would know you were Theodore Nott."

Knowing that had all just come straight out of his mind in a minute or less, a small, skeptical part of my mind finally confirmed for itself that the Sorting Hat actually sorts correctly.

"Fine," I said, knowing I'd much rather pretend to be a Ravenclaw genius than a Hufflepuff firstie. "So, are you going to put the glamour on me now?"

Goldstein nodded. "We should go to that loo Moaning Myrtle haunts. I would suggest The Room of Requirement except for that the Gryffindors have already moved in – the Carrows hate them the most, so they're going in first. Then the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, because they're less hated."

Around half an hour later I stepped out of the girls' loo looking like David Moon, with well kept dark brown hair, pale skin, a small nose, short height and a modest dark blue robe, which Goldstein explained was the robe Moon usually wore. I resembled Moon down to the last hair, except for my eyes, which remained my usual dark brown.

"That's the annoying thing about glamours," Goldstein told me. "At least one thing has to stay the same. When you get more advanced in glamours you can make it only be a freckle or something, but I'm not that far yet so I can only make it something prominent like eyes."

I nodded, not really paying attention to his rambling.

"Have to go," Goldstein said. "I have Arithmancy next, and Vector hates getting tardy students." And he darted off.

"Well," said Longbottom, looking at Goldstein's running form. "Come on No – Moon. We've got to get you to The Room of Requirement."

"You mean The Room of Hidden Things?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Probably." Then he started walking and I trailed after him…

A couple months later, instead of just the Gryffindors and me in The Room of Hidden Things or The Room of Requirement, the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were there, too.

No Slytherins, of course. I continuously wondered how Daphne, Tracey, Blaise, and Sally-Anne were doing. But Blaise, always on the morbid side, probably thought I had died. Graphically. I tried to get a scene of Blaise describing animatedly how exactly I had been killed by reading a thick book that Anthony Goldstein had just left aside.

All of a sudden, the tome was jerked out of my hands by Mandy Brocklehurst, a muggleborn Ravenclaw who had gotten in here by way of The Hog's Head almost a month ago, and she shouted, "Harry Potter's here! _Harry Potter's here!_"

Potter just always had to cause a ruckus whenever he came somewhere, didn't he? I got out of the hammock and walked out of the Ravenclaw section into the main part of The Room of Requirement, and sure enough, there was Potter in all his scrawny black-haired, green-eyed glory, along with his friends Granger and Weasley; a Gryffindor, Dean Thomas, who was probably a muggleborn, considering I hadn't seen him for the better part of the year; and that loony Ravenclaw Luna Lovegood. Not to mention a few other people. I nearly thought Potter's gaze would find me and he'd go apeshit because there was an evil Slytherin in the DA for all the shining good people, but then I remembered I was David Moon, Ravenclaw genius, and that I looked like him as well.

I watched Seamus Finnigan roar and hug Thomas, and I watched Potter smiling from ear to ear as if there wasn't a damn war going on, and just watched some more.

But a few minutes later, he stopped smiling, and adopted the grim, rather brooding face he had used for much of fifth year, and started talking. I heard him talk about "a mission" and how "he had to do this" and how he "wished he could tell them".

He, Weasley, and Granger stayed for a couple more minutes, though, and studied what The Room of Requirement had become. As I watched his gaze travel over the Gryffindor hangings, the Hufflepuff hangings, and the Ravenclaw hangings, his eyes went to the next space and then suddenly stopped; he had noticed the absence of any Slytherin hangings.

He and his friends would put it down to Slytherins being evil, of course. Not because they couldn't be there because of the stereotypes and prejudice.

And then they left, dashing off to the Ravenclaw common room (The Ravenclaw Common Room?) on their important mission, with Lovegood leading them…

And then what seemed seconds later, we were all in the Great Hall and McGonagall was directing underage students out, plus all the Slytherins – or so she thought. She was probably too frantic to notice the absence of one Theodore Nott, who had shed his David Moon glamour. Perhaps the mere presence of Pansy Parkinson seemed to mean that all the seventh year Slytherins were being led out, or maybe that McGonagall didn't notice Blaise, Tracey, Daphne, and Sally-Anne slip out of the crowd, and never noticed they had mysteriously disappeared.

If she had, she had probably thought they had joined the Death Eaters.

Sweet Merlin, how long had this stereotyping gone on?

But I didn't really matter. _I_, a Slytherin, was fighting, and _I _knew that. Who cared about those ignorant prats? I fought when neutrality disappeared.

Finally, I stood.

* * *

**A/N: This turned out be a much lengthier oneshot than I thought it would be, but that may be explainable, as I believe I started this in February or January, and the idea for this much changed, from being a stand alone oneshot to being the first of an anthology of oneshots about Theodore Nott to what I have finally decided it should be, a collection of oneshots about the Slytherins in Harry's year. Don't worry; I doubt any will be as long as this one, which is fifteen pages single spaced on Microsoft Word.**

**On a different topic, I have found my Theodore Nott to be a very hard character to write. That provides a challenge for me, at least.**

**Constructive criticism appreciated.**


	2. Sweets

**A/N: The shortness of this one makes up for the monstrous length of Refraining From Standing; it's not even 1k.**

**Disclaimer: After the blatant Slytherin-hate in Deathly Hallows, do you think JK Rowling would make a fanfiction showing them in a different light?**

* * *

Sweets are for the innocent, the kind, the nice. No one really thinks that a Slytherin would like sweets, because no one can imagine someone mean, cruel, and evil liking sweets. Most can't wrap their minds around Slytherins clamoring to buy something at Honeydukes, or going whenever they can to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour in Diagon Alley.

The Slytherins all laugh at this, something else others think they are unable to do if they're not laughing at someone who's been hurt or embarrassed or punished. However, they'd also be mortified if someone found out. The Slytherins had an image to uphold.

Blaise Zabini is a sugar quills fanatic. He buys a box every Hogsmeade weekend and at least one person gives him some every Christmas and for his birthday. All Slytherins have become long accustomed to seeing Blaise with two quills by his side in the common room – one for his homework, and one to suck on.

Draco Malfoy has a fancy for ice mice. They're one of the rarer sweets in the wizarding world, and when the Slytherins of his year first saw him squeaking and chattering (the well known side effect for eating ice mice) they all momentarily wondered if Draco had gone crazy. Now they're used to it, and Draco found a way to lessen the noise of it anyway.

Vincent Crabbe delights in buying large chocoballs filled with strawberry mousse and clotted cream from Honeydukes, and for the rest of the Hogsmeade trip he'll slowly pick chocoballs from his hands and chew on them methodically, a satisfied grin on his face. Unlike with other desserts and sweets, Crabbe always manages to save some chocoballs for later.

It's always funny to see bluebell colored bubbles from Drooble's Best Blowing Gum hover around Gregory Goyle for days, as Goyle's jaw keeps moving as he chews the gum. The Slytherins keep track of how big Goyle gets his bubbles; the record was nearly as big as his head.

Theodore Nott has almost been sent to the hospital wing many a time when an onlooker saw him breathing fire and his mouth smoking from eating some of his beloved Pepper Imps. As far as the Slytherins know, he's the only person who can eat one without batting an eye. Blaise tried an Imp once, when Theo offered him one – he actually did have to go the hospital wing.

For Daphne Greengrass the best sweet is a licorice wand; it doesn't matter if the licorice is red or black. Theo almost picked one up once, mistaking it for his wand. He received a black eye for it and hasn't gone near Daphne when she has a licorice wand in hand since.

Sally-Anne Perks's favorite sweet is simpler than any other of the Slytherins' – it's just ice cream. It doesn't matter whether the ice cream's vanilla of chocolate, strawberry or mint chip, rainbow sherbet or cookies'n'cream, or any other flavor. If it's ice cream, she'll eat it. If any of her classmates ever bump into her at Diagon Alley when they're shopping for school supplies, she'll have a bowl in two, spooning ice cream out of it.

Though non-Slytherins might say snidely it fit her perfectly, Pansy Parkinson persisted in loving Peppermint Toads. Draco would also say it fit her perfectly – not because it was shaped like a toad, the reason a non-Slytherin would use, but because she was sharp with a tang, just like peppermint. But Draco would also collapse in hysterics whenever he could tell the Toads were jumping around in her stomach, so maybe he only said it to appease Pansy, she would continue to make him laugh.

There is someone obsessed with chocolate frogs in every house, and Millicent Bulstrode occupied that position in Slytherin. The only chocolate frog cards Millicent had yet to collect were the ones that had yet to be released. She always laughed when the Hufflepuff Ernie MacMillan boasted he had collected the most chocolate frog cards out of all the people at Hogwarts. But unlike many, Millicent also liked the chocolate frogs themselves. "It's just ordinary chocolate, Millicent," someone would say. Millicent didn't care.

Tracey Davis had liked sherbet even before she discovered she was a witch, so Fizzing Whizzbees had tickled her fancy right when she first entered Honeydukes. Theo always pointed out they were just sherbet balls that did what a Wingardium Leviosa could do. Tracey always returned that he just didn't like sherbet anyway, and that the levitation that a Whizzbee gave was much stronger than using the Wingardium Leviosa on a person. After the Slytherins read _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ and discovered Billywing stings were a component in Fizzing Whizzbees, they all swore them off forever. Except for Tracey, who smiled and said, "More for me." Theo has since decided that she doesn't have an ounce of common sense.

Sweets have a deeper meaning than everyone thinks.

* * *

**A/N: All the wizarding sweets mentioned here were mentioned in the actual books; I made none up.**

**Constructive criticism appreciated.**


	3. Slytherin's Paradox

**A/N: In my world, Tracey Davis is muggleborn. I'm pretty sure JKR said she was halfblood in some notes she showed in an interview, but she also showed muggleborns as halfbloods and vice versa, so…**

**Disclaimer: Blarg. Here is my last disclaimer for the whole fic. You don't need to be reminded each chapter. I am not JK Rowling and I don't own Harry Potter and I am in no way associated with her and the HP Franchise besides my writing fanfiction. There.**

* * *

"Slytherin!"

No. Oh God (or should it be Merlin, now she's a witch?), no.

Tracey Davis had listened to what the purebloods and halfbloods at said about the houses. Slytherin was for the ambitious and cunning, all right, but it was also only for purebloods. Even the Sorting Hat's song had said it, Slytherin had wanted to only school those whose ancestry was purest. But then why had the Sorting Hat contradicted itself and sorted her into the house of purebloods?

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if that had been all, but it wasn't all. According to all the first years with prior knowledge of the wizarding world, everyone in Slytherin was obsessed with blood purity. To the Slytherins, she'd just be a muggleborn, a filthy _mudblood._ A cat among the canaries – or rather, a canary among the cats.

A canary among _hungry_ cats.

_But I'm a muggleborn!_ she shouted to the Hat, beginning to take it off her head.

As Tracey placed it back on the three legged stool, she faintly heard what may have been the Sorting Hat's response: _What's your point?_

Tracey rolled her eyes and tried to walk to the menacing looking Slytherin table as quickly as possible. It was decked in green and silver, and judging by the hanging poised over it, their mascot appeared to be a serpent. One good thing about Slytherin at least, she supposed. She had always liked snakes. But that did _not_ mean she was a Slytherin; it was like saying if she liked –she looked at the hangings above another table, the Hufflepuff one– it was like saying if she liked badgers she had to be a Hufflepuff.

When she arrived at the table, she walked all the way to the very end, farthest away from the front of the Great Hall. Surely no other first year – or other year, for that matter – would sit here. No one would notice her, no one would antagonize her.

Two other first years had already been sorted into Slytherin. One was a tall and stocky girl with short, dark brown hair; Tracey vaguely remembered her name to be Millicent Bull or Bullstack or something like that. The other one was thickset and for a moment Tracey wondered if there were trolls in the wizarding world. She didn't remember this boy's sorting as well, but she was sure his surname had been something like Crab.

Tracey continued to watch the Sortings, perking up whenever there was another Slytherin Sorted, and then immediately blending back into the background. Soon after she was Sorted, "Greengrass, Daphne" and "Goyle, Gregory" also came into Slytherin. Gregory Goyle had almost the exact same appearance as the Crab boy, but he was a bit shorter and his hair had a bowl-cut. Daphne Greengrass looked okay, but Tracey couldn't be too sure. For all the muggleborn knew, she could be just as much of a blood purist as the rest of them.

After that, all the kids went to Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, or Ravenclaw. Finally, a "Malfoy, Draco" was called, and a snotty looking boy with slicked back blond hair was Sorted into Slytherin. He looked like the worst of the lot, and when he sat down, Tracey slid almost over the edge of her seat.

After him, the newest Slytherin was another boy, a weedy "Nott, Theodore".

The next Slytherin was a "Parkinson, Pansy" who, when Sorted, sat down straight next to the snobby Draco Malfoy boy and started to simper over him, though she didn't look too happy about it, Tracey observed.

From what she had heard about Slytherin, the next Slytherin Sorting surprised Tracey. She had seen this girl on the train, and with her insufferable perkiness, she didn't seem like a blood purist at all. Nevertheless, "Perks, Sally-Anne" went straight to Slytherin almost as soon as the hat touched her head. Oddly, she seemed to drop the eager demeanor as soon as she sat down.

A "Potter, Harry" was called and for some reason the Great Hall was suddenly filled with murmurs. The boy didn't look too impressive, but his name sounded familiar – hadn't it been in one of the books she'd been skimming through at Flourish and Blotts? After a long Sorting, though, the boy went to Gryffindor.

There was another long wait for Slytherins, and as the list went down to the later letters, Tracey assumed there would be no more Slytherins in her year. However, the very last first year, a "Zabini, Blaise" joined the Slytherin ranks.

All the Slytherin first years – excepting her, of course – sat near each other and started to talk, if rather stiffly and uncomfortably; yet, Tracey also got the feeling they knew each other. She made a mental list in her head.

Millicent – Bull? Bullstack? – Looked like a tomboy, who would readily wrestle and fight. Tracey held herself above such things. No, she wasn't girly, but really, who would willingly _wrestle_?

Crab boy – Tracey was sure someone had just called him Vincent. Vincent Crab, then? She supposed so. He looked like a troll. And from the way he was shoveling food in his mouth more than he spoke, Tracey felt she had some support to her claim, too.

Daphne Greengrass – Tracey had to admit, she seemed like the best of them. But she had been Sorted into Slytherin, and she would probably despise Tracey for being a muggleborn like the rest of them…

Gregory Goyle – The crab boy's twin troll brother but with a different surname? Perhaps. But she couldn't observe him very well, as he was sitting farthest away from her.

Draco Malfoy – If anyone was a blood purist, it was probably him. He just…_looked_ like it. Tracey supposed she shouldn't assume such a thing if he just looked like a snooty rich boy, but she couldn't help thinking it. He also had the type of body movements that suggested he thought he was the best, the leader, the prince. Snorting, Tracey knew he wouldn't get that from _her._

Theodore Nott – Well, he looked better than all the other Slytherin boys, despite the weedy frame and those staring eyes. Actually, he looked quite observant, like she was.

Pansy Parkinson – She seemed pretty interesting, since it looked like she was forcing herself to be Draco Malfoy's serving girl; it was obvious from the expression she wore she didn't want to, though.

Sally-Anne Perks – The girl rather frightened Tracey. She had been so – so _perky_, just like her surname suggested, before the Sorting, but right when she sat down at the Slytherin table, the smile slid right off her face and was replaced with narrowed eyes and a mouth that looked like the only smile it was fit for was a smirk. Tracey thought she ought to be "the leader" instead of that Draco Malfoy.

Blaise Zabini – He reminded her of a cat that was toying with a frightened mouse, with that smug smile. Occasionally he seemed open his mouth and say a few snide words which would make its recipient glare and spit back a retort.

Not promising, Tracey decided. Even her primary school had been better than this, and they had all been a bunch of ignorant prats who didn't know left from right.

Okay, maybe they were better than the kids in her year at her old primary school. But all the same, Tracey wished she had been Sorted into Ravenclaw. She probably would have fit in much better there.

* * *

The password to the Slytherin common room was umbra. Tracey was surprised but relieved at this; she had almost been expecting for it to be something like pureblood.

All the first years were eager to see their dormitories, but before they could leave the common room, the prefect that had led them there, a boy called Henry Konigsburg, stopped them, barking, "Wait here." He left for a minute or so then came back with another prefect.

"Sit," he commanded, and all the Slytherin firsties did so, sitting down on chairs carved from greenish stone. Tracey took a moment to examine the common room, which didn't seem like a common room at all. It had a low ceiling, greenish lamps and more greenish chairs, some skulls, and looked like a dungeon in her opinion. From what she'd overheard of her fellow first years' whispers, it was also located under a lake, the one they'd rowed across to the get to the castle. Though also seeming to scream, "We are evil! We are evil!" it seemed to the Tracey the room had a certain beauty to it.

Henry Konigsburg pointed to Blaise Zabini, who occupied the first chair at one end. "Name!" he said.

"Blaise Zabini," he answered, giving Konigsburg a stare.

Konigsburg seemed unfazed, maybe even used to such a thing. "Pureblood?"

Blaise nodded. "Yes."

Konigsburg gave a slight nod, then moved his gaze to the next person, who was Daphne Greengrass.

"Daphne Greengrass," Daphne said, not bothering to wait for Konigsburg's command.

"Pureblood?"

"Yes."

And so it went on. Tracey learned that every Slytherin first year – _every single one_ – was a pureblood, except for Millicent Bullstack or whatever, who had a squib for a mother, whatever that was. A couple of the first years sneered slightly when Millicent said this, though she returned them with ferocious glares.

Finally Konigsburg got to Tracey, who was seated at the other end of the row.

"Tracey Davis," she said quietly.

Konigsburg's forehead creased, and all the first years stared at her, because the prefect had gotten them all right first time; they obviously didn't recognize her surname either. They were cottoning on.

"Muggleborn," Tracey said in a low voice, supplying Konigsburg's answer.

The prefect raised his eyebrows, but his response wasn't what Tracey expected. "So, only one this year, then?" he said.

Only? Only?! What did he mean, _only?_

"What do you mean, _only_?" Draco Malfoy spoke up, voicing Tracey's thoughts. "Are you implying _Slytherin_ gets _mudbloods_?"

"No," Tracey snapped, feeling as if her feelings for Draco Malfoy were justified, "he's implying that there're maggots in your head."

"Very far from clever, just like a mudblood," Draco sniffed, turning away from her.

"Think you know everything about Slytherin, Draco Malfoy?" Konigsburg said, hands on hips. "You don't know everything, just because you have an ancient family loaded with gold." He turned back to Tracey, then said, "Pay no attention to him. He does not know everything about our house. And neither to do the rest of you," Konigsburg added, looking at the rest of the first-years.

"We," he began, "are not blood purists. This reputation has been gained from the Dark Lord Vol – Vol – Voldemort, fake tales about Salazar Slytherin, and many of the older and richer families who are blood purists that are in Slytherin. Actually, we have as many muggleborns as we have halfbloods and maybe even purebloods in Slytherin. Not that any of the other houses would believe this. However, some Slytherins refuse to believe this and would rather not acknowledge it, so we cast a spell on those Slytherins and the students in all the other houses to believe they are not muggleborn. Our head of house, Professor Snape, lets us do this.

"If any of you here would like to have the spell cast on you along with the students of the other houses of Hogwarts, raise your hand."

Draco's hand moved, but when he looked around and so no one else raising their hand, his stayed down.

"Very well," said Konigsburg. "Draco, according to our archives, your father had it cast on him when he was a student. You cannot complain to him about this."

Draco made a jerky nod and slouched in his chair, scowling.

Konigsburg and the other prefect walked over to Tracey, who, instead of attempting to blend in with the background, just watched in curiosity. The two prefects pointed their wands at Tracey's forehead and began chanting quickly in low voices, so quickly Tracey couldn't even distinguish the words. When they stopped after around five to ten seconds, a small silvery light flashed between the tips of their wands and Tracey's forehead.

"There," said Konigsburg, as the other prefect smiled, "all done. Only we in this room, the other Slytherin students that preferred not to know before, and the teachers know you're a muggleborn.

Tracey nodded, trying to rebuild her image of Slytherin in her head.

* * *

Tracey plopped down on her bed, a rather unusual action for her. Her bed stood farthest from the door to their dormitory. Closest to her bed was Daphne Greengrass's, who lie there now, reading a book.

Daphne Greengrass had seemed okay…and now Tracey knew Slytherins really weren't blood purists, just ambitious and cunning, like she had learned on the train ride to Hogwarts. Tracey put one and one together. Getting off her bed, she walked over to Daphne's, standing in front of it.

"Hello," said Tracey, "I'm Tracey Davis."

Daphne lowered her book. "Daphne Greengrass," she responded. "Honored."

* * *

**A/N: Constructive criticism appreciated.**


	4. Slytherpuff

**A/N: I just sincerely hope I didn't mangle Pansy Parkinson's character in this oneshot.**

* * *

Sometimes Pansy Parkinson wonders (then immediately shudders) if she should have been a Hufflepuff. Of course, then she tells herself she's a full blooded Slytherin or else she wouldn't have been sorted into that house, but Pansy knows no one has only the traits of one single house, including her.

One good example is Draco Malfoy. Ever since she was a toddler, she has been encouraged by her parents to get close to him so that he'll fall in love with her; in that way, they will get married and the Parkinson family would hold a lot of importance by being interconnected with the Malfoys. They would also get richer. But Pansy hates being almost nothing but a tool for her parents; she'll live the way she wants to, not by her parents' whim.

Not that it matters; her parents might possibly get their wish whether they wanted to or not. Now Pansy's very good friends with Draco, since they've been playing together from the age of three or four. Good friendship doesn't turn into love – it stays as good friendship. Yet Pansy wishes they'll fall in love so her parents will be pleased.

That's not Slytherin.

Pansy hates it when Draco implies on the train ride to Hogwarts in their sixth year that he's received the Dark Mark, even though he's done it for a somewhat honorable cause. He's doomed himself because his father lost the favor of the Dark Lord. He'll die and they'll never marry and her parents will never get what they want and she and Draco will never laugh together again and talk about Hogwarts and make fun of the Gryffindors and rant about Slytherin prejudice and try to figure out which mudbloods are good (like Tracey) and which mudbloods are bad (like Granger) and…and…and…

That's not Slytherin.

She simpers over Draco so everyone else will understand he's good enough for someone to want to fuss over him. So they'll understand if someone cares about him like that they'll see he must be respected and good, though it would depend what kind of good. But instead everyone thinks Pansy is infatuated with Draco instead, that she's empty headed and just squeals about him because he's oh-so-handsome and oh-so-rich. Instead they think she's Draco's slut, there to cater to his every need and whim because she has nothing else to do. And that Draco puts up with it because he thinks he deserves it.

That's not Slytherin.

Slytherin is to fall in love or not fall in love and disregard the wishes of her parents, because who cares about them, when Pansy thinks about all she can do for herself? If Pansy falls in love its her place in society that gets raised, not her parents'. Pansy will attend all the important parties and will be in a rich and well known family. She will be influential – why, she could be in the Daily Prophet! – and everyone will know her opinions, and perhaps be swayed to them as well if Pansy's persuasive enough.

That's Slytherin.

Slytherin is to feel sorry for a moment that Draco has doomed himself to death, then wonder how he can be such a thick person, to follow and die instead of to stay behind the curtain and live. To laugh at him for his foolish choices even though he has been Pansy's friend for most of her life. To recall the memories and then toss them into the garbage bin, thinking it'll be just as good to discuss the same issues with another friend.

That's Slytherin.

Slytherin is to throw away any thoughts of simpering of Draco to show people how good he is and use that time to show people how good _she_ is, why Pansy deserves admiration and respect and like. To put on a mask to the Gryffindors to show she's not evil but brave, a different mask to the Hufflepuffs to show she is hardworking and loyal, and yet another mask to the Ravenclaws to show she is intelligent and thoughtful. To convince people she is not a slut or a whore, but an independent young woman with strong opinions.

That's Slytherin.

But no one – not even Salazar Slytherin himself – is completely and wholly Slytherin. Slytherin is just a name coined for the ambitious and cunning people, the people who want others to think well of them in any way, to get respect in any shape or form, or to accomplish their plans and even hide in the shadows to do it.

No one is totally like that. So why is Pansy so concerned?

Didn't she show herself to be Slytherin when she left the Great Hall and not take part in the battle, though every other Slytherin in her year, even Blaise and Sally-Anne, stayed, so she would be out of danger, so she would survive, so that if the Dark Lord won she wouldn't be in danger?

No.

Once again it was out of loyalty, ridiculous Hufflepuff loyalty, that she did something. She would have been fighting against what her parents supported, what her friend Draco supported, what most of the people she had known for all her lives supported. Pansy could never have dueled with someone she knew that well. Though she was a Slytherin, Pansy could not kill.

And to this day, Pansy still thinks bitterly, a frown on her face, her eyes narrowed, and her forehead creased, that she should have been a Hufflepuff.

* * *

**A/N: Please tell me I didn't destroy Pansy. That's all I'm asking. Plus the usual:**

**Constructive criticism appreciated.**


	5. Truest

**A/N: Sorry for the wait. I was writing a chapter for another fanfiction, and it took a long time as the chapter was much longer than usual. So, this one is Sally-Anne Perks and I hope you enjoy my version of her, as all we ever get of her is McGonagall calling "Perks, Sally-Anne!" to be sorted in the first book, and nothing after that, not even what house she ended up in.**

**Come on. If the last name is Perks, they've just **_**got**_** to be in Slytherin. xDD**

* * *

It was drummed into her from the moment she could understand it. To be a Slytherin – a real Slytherin, a true Slytherin, the most Slytherin Slytherin of all. Though Sally-Anne's surname hadn't always been Perks, her family was an ancient one, one that had been particularly close friends with the Slytherin family in the age when Slytherins still existed. Their family was one of the first that chose to send their children to that new school Hogwarts, created by four foolhardy young witches and wizards, as the older ones called them. It would fail within five years.

But as Sally-Anne knew, it didn't. It continued, and with it, it's houses. So to be Slytherin was still drummed into every Perks child's mind.

_We are a family of true Slytherins, real Slytherins, Slytherins that could never be fake. Remember that when you are scorned because your family isn't as rich as the Malfoys. Remember that when you are scorned by other Slytherins because your family was neutral instead of supporting the Dark Lord Voldemort, because going neutral was the most sensible and Slytherin thing to do._

_You are a Slytherin._

And Sally-Anne was proud, very, very proud. She was a Slytherin, a Slytherin from a very old family of Slytherin, and she let everyone know – not by boasting about it, of course, which was only something a foolish _Gryffindor_ would do, but just by _being _Slytherin.

Oh, they had thought her anything but at first; her classmates had thought the Sorting Hat had made a horrible mistake when she flounced to the table, happy and perky and annoying down to the tips of her toes. And the fact that her initials. excluding her middle name, combined to make the word "SAP" didn't help much either. Years after that, some of them would sometimes ask her if it was horribly embarrassing, acting so fake and perky like that all the time. Sally-Anne always said no; by being conspicuous she was being Slytherin, but no one outside of her house would ever understand.

It still made Sally-Anne smirk whenever she recalled the memory of them being led to the Slytherin common room. At once she had stopped chattering and giggling and smiling, as an instant change was wrought over her. Her blonde ponytail somehow seemed less bouncy and bright, her eyes not as big, her face not as round. They had all stared at her; Theo, Draco, Vincent, Gregory, Pansy, Daphne, Tracey, Millicent, and Blaise, every one. Blaise just opened his mouth a couple times, stared at her, and asked, "What the hell happened?"

Sally-Anne's blonde ponytail indeed seemed much less bright and bouncy. Now it seemed modest and pale blonde. Her supposedly big eyes had shrunk; they were now slits where glinting dark brown eyes hid. One could never think her face had seemed round, because now it was pale and oval shaped.

It was like the cheerfulness had been sucked out of her, revealing cold, dry remains.

Sally-Anne had just smirked. "No," she said, "the Sorting Hat did not make a mistake." Then she had slunk to the first year girls' dormitory, leaving her year-mates speechless.

"That's one Slytherin," Theo had whispered, shaking his head in awe.

Millicent just gaped. "If she keeps up that fake perky personality in the Slytherin common room and dormitory too, as well as classes, I think I shall be dead before the year is out."

After that, Sally-Anne had been given a bit of a space, a bit of respect, for she was _the_ Slytherin in their year, and no one could deny it. Not Draco Malfoy with his tons of money; not Pansy Parkinson, with her extreme blood purist parents. The signs of a very Slytherin Slytherin weren't two well known stereotypes, because that wasn't Slytherin. One could just tell, by observing them, like Sally-Anne. No one could have mistaken her for, say, a Hufflepuff. No matter how Hufflepuff-ish the name sounded (something Pansy had pointed out while Tracey, Millicent, and Daphne stifled their laughter) it was, after all, the personality that mattered, not the name.

And as Pansy had said, she was the Slytherpuff, not Sally-Anne, and Sally-Anne had _no damn right_ to take that position from her.

At that point Millicent was in hysterics and at that Sally-Anne smirked.

At the end of first year, Sally-Anne had come home and told her parents how everyone outside Slytherin thought she was a one-dimensional girl who was always giggly, annoying, and perky to the point of one could be giggled to death by her.

Her parents had praised her and told her to continue being the true Slytherin she was.

It was all Sally-Anne had really, the title of Real Slytherin or True Slytherin. When that's all you have, you cling to it tighter than anything else, especially when you consider being such a thing very significant, while Sally-Anne did. In her life, she had nothing else to do but _be_ Slytherin, the best Slytherin one could be.

In Theo's words, that was an Old Slytherin. The Slytherin stereotype of today Theo had dubbed, predictably, New Slytherin. Though Sally-Anne had some respect for Theo, she couldn't help rolling her eyes at this. Salazar Slytherin would not have approved – it was much too obvious, not to mention a bit boastful, as if Theo had coined those phrases, he obviously would consider himself an Old Slytherin.

Besides, in Sally-Anne's point of view, Theo had missed the point entirely. The Slytherins of today were hated and feared for being blood purists, maniacal, evil, influential. And what was wrong with that? Sure, Sally-Anne wasn't a blood purist, she definitely wasn't evil (though she might seem like it), and she definitely wasn't a maniac. But it was an advantage – because non-Slytherins (and indeed, even some Slytherin-types) thought Sally-Anne was all this, she was feared. She gained power from the non-Slytherins' determination for her not to have power, and reveled in it, though the revelry was only in her mind and did not show on the outside.

And because of the blood purists side of the stereotype, there was also Voldemort support guaranteed, too. It was good to let it be known that Sally-Anne was neutral, because then she'd constantly be watched and wondered about. _She's neutral, not on either side. Will she turn to the Light? Will she turn Dark? She's in Slytherin, she'll probably support Voldemort! But she's neutral, and every follower Voldemort gains is a count against us…_

Yes, it was the best choice to be neutral. Most Slytherins in her year were, though at the end of seventh year they had been forced to reluctantly switch to Light when the war came to Hogwarts, because if they didn't fight, then they would be thought Dark, and Sally-Anne knew she and her fellow Slytherin year mates most certainly were _not_ Dark. Laughable to think such a thing, really.

Sally-Anne remained a true Slytherin, even in the final battle against Voldemort, the Battle of Hogwarts as it had been dubbed. Her opponents, most of them former Slytherins themselves, had disgusted her. At that moment she had to agree with Theo's perception of New and Old Slytherins, for once, because some of those Death Eaters were the Newest Slytherins she could see. They tackled her because she made herself seem helpless and giggly, only in it so that she could boast later about being in the battle and making it out alive due to _ever so supreme_ talent.

Most of them didn't count on the shallow looking teenager to be the type to use nonverbal spells at once, then smirk at them. Sally-Anne hoped they were left – or died – with the thought of having seen a true Slytherin, a real one.

Sally-Anne left Hogwarts rather sad, as chances of using her shallow and perky persona would soon become few and far between. One couldn't always count on using them for job interviews, depending on what you were trying to get employed for. For example, what was the point of using the perky persona if one became a potioneer? There was no point, no point at all.

That wouldn't stop her from still being a real Slytherin, though. No, Sally-Anne would continue to be a true Slytherin, the truest Slytherin of them all.

* * *

**A/N: Constructive criticism appreciated.**


	6. Mask

I apologize for taking so long to get this up, but I was busy writing a chapter for another fic, and it took a while. However, since I got out of school last week, my updates will probably not be as sporadic.

Mask

The Slytherins were well acquainted with masks. They had been raised to wear masks, to always keep one at the ready. After all, how could one live life without a mask to use? True selves weren't always best kept at the surface.

Not real masks, of course; figurative ones. Real masks were gaudy, tawdry things, usually used as some sort of romantic item for dances and plays and games. Those masks didn't help at all; they hid the wrong things and kept the ones that should be hidden in full view.

Sally-Anne Perks slips on a mask that changes her personality and even her appearance when she is anywhere but the Slytherin common room. It would be dangerous for a non-Slytherin to see her true self instead of a shallow, giggly girl.

Pansy Parkinson puts on a hard, tough mask consisting of lies and insults and shrieks and screams. With her mask, she obsesses about Draco, fawns over him and becomes his servant. Without it, any type of servant is the house-elf, and she is Draco's good friend with whom to laugh about stupid Mudblood Gryffindors.

Blaise Zabini would never let his true personality escape from behind the curtain. All he has to do is act like he hates Mudbloods and will be a Death Eater when he grows up and no one will pay more attention to him than they should.

How could Draco Malfoy ever reveal his quirks and his heart when he wears a mask? No; all they can know him as is cold and cruel, gray-eyed and pale-skinned, Mudblood-hater and pureblood-lover. It's too much bother to let them know that he has a heart that still beats under his Slytherin robes.

Tracey Davis is a Muggle-born, has always been a Muggle-born, and will always be a Muggle-born – or, at least, until she reluctantly assumes her mask. Then she becomes Tracey Davis, your average Slytherin with a posh accent and a loathing for those not born to witches and wizards.

Daphne Greengrass is a normal person, a person with layers of personality and opinions and longings and goals. She is hardy and resourceful, always looking for the best way to do something. But then on goes her delicate, pale mask, and she is a rich pureblood with cool eyes, preceded by the swish of fashionable, elegant robes, the smirk of one who knows she's better, and the hiss of an insult.

Millicent Bulstrode is nice and helpful and loves cats, but the minute the mask is on her face, she is mean and stupid, one who lives only to hurt and to leer and to grunt, just as her appearance suggests.

Vincent Crabbe may be somewhat slow, but he is determined to be smart and to be successful, and he's trying the best he can. But it's hard to do so when your mask demands you to be one of Draco's grunts, one whose only talent is looking intimidating and landing a good punch.

Gregory Goyle's surname is similar to the word gargoyle, and what's better to emulate than a surname suggestion when he has to put on his mask? And one thing leads to another, so, of course Goyle has to be dumb, because you never hear of gargoyles being smart.

Theo Nott hates his mask, but he still finds himself putting it on. With it, he becomes the Death Eater's son, one who will obviously become a Death Eater himself. He becomes the arrogant Slytherin pureblood with a trademark smirk and snigger, a sneer and plenty of scorn.

Without their masks, the Slytherins are normal teenage students who don't know what they'll do in the world. With them, they are elegant yet cruel purebloods, represented by sneers and sniffs, by smirks and glares, by insults and wealth and power. With their invisible masks, they are future Death Eaters, Mudblood-haters, ready to use Unforgivables at the drop of a hat, all mean and cruel and evil, all arrogant and prejudiced and conceited.

They need to use the masks far too often, no matter how much they despise them. They need to use them no matter how much they frighten them. The masks are beneficial, but someday a time will come when the Slytherins will not be able to tell the difference between their times with masks and without, when their time with the masks will represent them better than without, when they are free and their own.

And the Slytherins don't know how soon that's coming.


	7. Difficulties of Silver

Written for Cuban Sombrero Gal's Idiom Challenge at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum.

_Difficulties of Silver_

Silver is one of the colors by which Draco Malfoy had always been identified. So why can't he find it in any of the clouds he inspects?

He certainly doesn't find it in the cloud of publicity, nor the cloud of not being in Azkaban like many of those he spent time with during the war. The clouds of vacations away from Britain, ignoring what others say about him, pretending as if the war never happened: these clouds conceal no silver lining. They only have hard grey bases that painfully remind Draco that he is not succeeding in his attempts to recover some sort of semblance of a normal life.

His mother and father are no help, staying in the manor or going to parties in an attempt to pretend as if life is as normal as ever (Draco doesn't know how many times he's refused to go to any parties no matter how many times his mother asks him to do so), and, like him, they can't find the silver lining, either.

Silver has fled the Slytherins, and now all they can cling to is green.

Something hard, Draco knows, when the wizarding world's hero has famous green eyes.

"You don't search for it," Theo says one afternoon when Draco bumps into him at a small café, stopping to chat for a few minutes. "It's the sort of thing that suddenly turns up."

Draco snorts. "Nothing's handed to you on a silver platter"—he grits his teeth when he realizes the mention of silver in the phrase—"and what I'm searching for definitely isn't one of them." Besides, Draco thinks, Theo knows nothing. He's engaged and doesn't have a tattoo on his arm, and, even if he's not really on good terms with the wizarding world—being a Slytherin in wartime does that—he doesn't have it as bad as Draco.

"I'm not the kind the wizarding world wants to find happiness," Draco mutters, sipping his drink. "That goes to the war heroes and the cripples, the orphans and the ones who lost family."

An unimpressed frown is on Theo's face, like always. "Well, no wonder you're still searching. What kind of attitude is that?" Theo gets up, pushes his chair back, and leaves, the door to the café closing with a quiet swish after him.

_Attitude. _Always included in those kinds of juvenile chidings. Draco grimaces, throws away his drink, and leaves, also.

Draco was going to find that silver lining, dammit, and he wouldn't stop until he saw it hidden among the grey of the clouds.

(It's his mother, in the end, who forces him to dance with at least one of the women at that ball, and he just happens to pick Daphne's younger sister, whom he trusts not to ask too many of those questions.)

--

Really not too pleased with this one, but it was an opportunity to update ATTWWW, and I wanted to try to write Draco Malfoy.


	8. Hollow Smile

_Hollow Smile_

It during Halloween that Theodore Nott's reputation as a clever Slytherin loner is always ripped to shreds. For him, Halloween has always been _scary._

The thought that's always prevailed is that this isn't the Muggle world, where all Halloween is is dress-up and candy and fake, cheap attempts at being spooky. This is the wizarding world, where there's that added aspect of magic—

(It is here in this train of thought that Theo tries not to imagine carved jack-o'-lanterns, with spiky grins and fiery eyes and their souls and insides taken out to make something hollow and empty walking after him, lurching and grasping, and spiky dark smiles open wide and gaping to bite out his insides and his soul too, while their creators are praised by how original and spooky they were with the carving and the faces.)

Theo always stays far, far away from jack-o-lanterns, especially the giant ones that Hagrid grows and uses to decorate the castle during Halloween; those are the ones that watch him the most, just _waiting_ for the right moment to pounce on him and rip out his soul with those poison-edged grins.

Sometimes Theo thinks that maybe that's how the costumes on Halloween originated, for would-be victims to disguise themselves in such terrible masks and guises, so that the jack-o'-lanterns would run away, their sharp jaws parted to scream and not to devour.

(And it is during this train of thought that Theo knows it backfired, that now the costumes are just as frightening as the soulless, hollow jack-o'-lanterns they intended to scare away. Because in the wizarding world, the five-year-old dressed as a vampire with cheap fake fangs can transform into a real vampire, those plastic fangs turned sharp and white and all too real, and if Theo is his escort, his thin neck will suddenly look so appealing...)

Theo does not dress up in costumes for Halloween. He does not want to walk under dark nights illuminated by a full moon and suddenly realize he is not Theodore Nott, but is twisting and screaming and howling and hairy and clawed and a _werewolf. _He does not want to see his friends and even people he hates writhing on the ground as their too-obviously-fake costumes bubble and steam and melt into their bodies, becoming part of _them,_ because now that Gryffindor is actually the Dark Lord Voldemort; that stupid Mudblood is now Darth Vader, who sounded much stupider when the Mudblood simply _described him;_ and now Tracy is a hag who's pouncing upon the first and second years with filthy fingers that have dirt under the sharpened claw-fingernails—and most of all, Theo does not want to be part of it, not knowing what's happening and just effortlessly becoming whatever he dressed up as and never knowing he was actually the Slytherin Theodore Nott.

Theo will not change into a creature that kills and claws and howls. Theo will not become soulless and empty because he was too slow for the spiky-smiled, maliciously cackling jack-o'-lanterns. Theo will stay Theo, who knows Halloween isn't something that's light and happy and cause for a feast, but something scary where nothing is definite and anything can change under the light of the much-too-big-and-bright full moon.

("What are you so scared about?" Blaise says, laughing, for Blaise is flamboyant and sees Halloween as an excuse for elaborate and colorful costumes.

Theo shudders and resists the urge to shout, "_Confringo_!" at the little pumpkin that soon won't be an innocent pumpkin that Blaise has on his bed.

Nobody understands. Halloween is _scary._)

--

Written for the Reviews Lounge Halloween challenge, because challenges are all I seem to get inspiration from these days.


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